Akron native Michael Nash now top cop in Grand Teton National Park

Courtesy National Park ServiceAfter working at some of the nation's most popular parks, Michael Nash worked his way up to become chief ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, a job he has formally held since August.

AKRON, Ohio -- Akron's Michael Nash and his father Tom have been leading each other down various career paths for decades.

Dad's field work as a University of Akron geography professor led the son to major in geography and cartography, even though he didn't want to go to college at all.

And the son's start as a National Park Service ranger in 1992 led the father to retire from his lifelong academic career to become an interpretive ranger at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

After working at some of the nation's most popular parks, Michael, 41, worked his way up to become chief ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, a job he has formally held since August.

But the influence that originally caused dad to leave academia might never have come along had Michael not been exposed to America's grandeur while playing soccer on a team coached by his father.

The professor had been the assistant soccer coach at the University of Akron, and all three of his sons played the sport there.

"While playing at Akron U, we went to Fresno [California] for a tournament, and an alum took us up to Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park," Michael Nash said by telephone Thursday. "That was my first view of a great Western national park, and I remember saying, 'Someday I'll work there.' "

He did.

Since 1992, the National Park Service let him see some of the most beautiful public lands in the Lower 48 states, starting at Acadia National Park in Maine, with tours in the Great Smoky Mountains and Grand Canyon national parks as well.

In the National Park Service, many are called rangers, but only some of them are actual law-enforcement officers like Michael Nash, while the rest perform many other roles important to a major park system.

At Grand Teton, Michael Nash oversees 21 full-time law-enforcement rangers, along with firefighters from the park service and National Forest Service, a dispatch center serving both Grand Teton and nearby Bridger-Teton National Forest, aviation management and emergency medical service.

Glacier Point notwithstanding, Michael Nash said he got the idea for a law-enforcement career from a ranger at Cuyahoga Valley National Park who told him about seasonal law-enforcement jobs, "which is kind of how most rangers get their start," he said.

While their stories differ slightly, father and son agree that the professor followed his son into the park service.

"I want the record to reflect that it was my good idea -- like son, like father," Michael Nash said. "I don't want him to get a big head."

Tom Nash, 74,who now teaches an online meteorology course through Lakeland Community College, recalls that he was on sabbatical in the early 1990s when a hurricane chewed up his research station in Hawaii, "and now I had all this time on my hands. Michael was already in the park service, and he said, 'Dad, why don't you become a seasonal ranger?' "

"He had been a college professor for 30-plus years," the younger Nash recalled, suggesting that he take his teaching skills outdoors as an interpretive ranger.

"He was inspired, I saw a new fire in him," the son said.

Fire indeed.

The professor worked that first season in the mid-1990s and liked it so well "that I went back to the university and took early retirement." That freed him up for more than a decade of wearing the park service's distinctive campaign hat and telling park visitors about everything from his knowledge base in geography to the history of the region and anything else the park service asked of him.

He described his son as unswervingly dependable and "mature beyond his years."

Tom Nash recalled that in 1990 his own mother died while Michael was a senior at Akron U.

"I had a huge international soccer conference planned [in Cleveland]," he said Friday. "I had to go to South Carolina, and turned it over to Michael. This was way before he got into the park service. He figures out how to get things done.

"Even if he weren't my son, I'd hire him to work for me," said a proud father.

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